


but how much, baby, do we really need

by curiouslyfic



Series: pants/earless [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Living Together, Marriage Proposal, Meeting the Parents, Pants/Earless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:50:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3917017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouslyfic/pseuds/curiouslyfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“D’you think you’d want to get married, Pants?” he asks artlessly, stretching out across the floor of her flat like he fits there. Like her small, shitty bedsit’s not all George while he’s there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but how much, baby, do we really need

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://kinky-kneazle.livejournal.com/profile)[**kinky_kneazle**](http://kinky-kneazle.livejournal.com/), on the occasion of her birth. Because she is made of awesome. ♥
> 
> Love and gratitude and flail to [](http://crazyparakiss.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://crazyparakiss.livejournal.com/)**crazyparakiss** for the encouragement. Wouldn't have happened without you, bb.  <3 Title from The Monkees' Daydream Believer.

“D’you think you’d want to get married, Pants?” he asks artlessly, stretching out across the floor of her flat like he fits there. Like her small, shitty bedsit’s not all George while he’s there.

She freezes at the question, only lets herself ease when she realizes he’s not asking, he’s only just curious. Still, she arches an eyebrow at him, ruffles unkindly at his hair until he looks back and tips his head to see her.

“I can safely say that I don’t, no.” She has to tread gently here, she thinks, because she knows how he is about family, but after what she’s seen of marriage, she’s dead sure it’s not meant for her. “Is that going to be a problem for you? Me not having aspirations of being Mrs. Earless and all?”

She holds her breath until he answers, though she tries hard not to let on. She likes him — likes everything about him, even the messy, irritating bits — and she’ll miss him if he goes, but she’s put too much into making her own way in life to tie herself down like that. Her parents were a right mess and her brothers and their wives aren’t much better, unfaithful and miserable or popping out kids they don’t much want, living up to some ideal someone’s handed down and wretchedly unhappy.

No, thanks.

She’s sure some people have bright and happy marriages, kids they want and partners they love, but that’s not the Parkinson way and it never has been. Pansy’s determined not to fall into that trap.

Not even for George.

He chews his lip a moment, tries to read her face. Bobs his head a little when he’s done. “Who’s to say you would? I could be Mr. Pants.”

There’s loads about him she enjoys but every so often, he stuns her with it again. It’s not big things anymore, it’s things like this, him offering to give up his own name to take hers, him doing it easily, a joke until she says it’s not. George is impossibly sweet at times and she adores it.

Adores him.

“You never could,” she soothes because he’s grown a bit uncertain in her silence, wiggling down the couch to be an easy lean from his mouth. “The absolute last thing I’d want to do to you is make you a Parkinson man.”

He knows what she means; he’s met her brothers, her father. Seen enough of her mum living on gin and regrets to fill in the rest.

“D’you think it matters, us not being married?” His pretty eyes are worried. She assumes it’s his mum put a bug in his ear again.

“Yeah,” she says. “Means we’re both of us here because we want to be and not because we’re obliged.”

The way his eyes light is infectious, spreads a peace all through her she’s come to equate with him. “Can I call you Mrs. Earless sometimes, though?” he asks, low and wicked, and she’s grinning back at him when she crooks her finger to gesture him up.

“You’re an idiot,” she says just before she kisses him and whatever he has to say to counter that is muffled by her mouth.

::

Pansy inherits an unofficial live-in and a wild pack of not-quite in-laws, most of whom she tolerates at best. She’s all right with some of his brothers — Charlie’s not bad, though he’s rarely home, and Percy’s Oliver’s a right laugh when the mood strikes — but she’s far less keen on the women, all of whom seem to think there’s something wrong with her for not wanting to be yet another Mrs. Weasley. The blonde one has another baby and tots it around in arms, offers to hand it off to Pansy whenever they’re in the same room together as though Pansy’s going to be struck maternal by osmosis.

The only one with sense enough to understand that won’t happen is Granger, who seems to think Pansy’s working on her career _for now_. Pansy’s hard-pressed to find a way to explain that she hasn’t any serious career ambitions, she’s happy enough with a wage to support her life, maybe a bit extra every now and again to tuck aside in her vaults for holiday; she’s sure Granger would find that as lacking as George’s mother finds the lack of babies and wedding plans.

Frankly, spending time with most of the Weasleys is the price she pays for having George, who pays her back in kind by dealing with her family when the need arises, and for having George as she wants him, there because he wants to be and not asking for anything she can’t give, she’d put up with his family twice over.

She gets on fine with Lee and his wife, Angelina, and George gets on a bit too well with her mates, really, particularly Draco, and it’s all absolutely everything she wants in life, a job to keep her busy and mates to fill her time, George a quiet, steady presence at her side through all of it.

His flat’s above his shop and not exactly _private_ , in that every Weasley in the world Floos in without warning and Pansy tires quickly of being caught _in flagrante_ , knickers down around an ankle and George over top of her, getting his fingers slick between her legs or burying his face in her tits like he does. It’s true they’ve been interrupted by customers or deliveries but those are relatively rare; what Pansy objects to most strenuously is the way his bloody family can’t leave off.

So they spend time at hers, and if George knows she’s put her fireplace to bar anything short of an emergency — particularly coming from the Burrow — he doesn’t say. Best, she thinks, that he has plausible deniability later.

Still, her flat’s a shitebox bedsit in a building Draco swears should be condemned, not much room for anything but a ratty mattress and her battered couch, a rack of books she hasn’t touched since she moved in and a kitchen immune to cleaning charms. George says he doesn’t mind it, hanging about here where there’s no space instead of spending time at his, and because he means well, she pretends to believe him.

Merlin knows she’s caught him trying his hand at expanding charms from time to time, sheepish when she calls him on it and promising on his wand he’s only doing it for her.

She’s bruised herself often knocking past the kitchen cupboard door handle to believe he is. Her flat’s all right for now, but it’s not the sort of thing she’ll be in forever and she knows it.

He must, as well, because one day when he’s got her straddling his lap, laughing at the cheek of him pulling her down and rocking just so against him to tease him back, he catches her face in his hands gently and holds her stare.

“You know how to fix that, don’t you?” he asks when she accuses him of making dirty-minded misuse of their proximity while she’s meant to be hexing dinner from her stove, and the only clue she has that he’s not joking is that she can read beneath his smile.

“Maybe I like you making dirty-minded misuse of me,” she prompts, waiting to feel his hand up her thigh. _What’s to fix_?

“That’s convenient,” he murmurs. “Move in with me?”

She blinks. Freezes again momentarily, then finds her voice. “To that Kings Cross of a flat?”

“We’ll change the Floo, grate the fireplace entirely if you want. Anything. Just—” He trails off, a bit lost, and looks away, stares at something over her shoulder for a moment. When he looks back, it’s all her Earless’s resolve again, and something flutters low in her belly, flushes warm just beneath her skin. “I want you there, Pants. In the mornings when I’d give anything to stay in bed. At night, when I get home. I want your mess of girl things in my bathroom and your dirty laundry on my bedroom floor. Merlin help me, I even want your terrible spellwork in my kitchen, irritating my appliances.”

She ought to take offense, she knows, because her kitchen spellwork’s more half-hearted than terrible, but she can’t. He’s serious, about his Floo grate and all of it, about wanting even the messiest bits of her, and she can’t imagine he just means her delinquency with laundry.

She turns her face into his palm, kisses her way to its centre and smiles.

“You’re delightful, Earless, you really are,” she murmurs, and he’s leaning in then to kiss the corner of her mouth.

“That a yes?”

She closes her eyes and bites her lip. “I still can’t marry you,” she says, stealing a look at him just after she’s said it to see how it’s gone over.

The warmth in his eyes hasn’t changed at all, though his face has gone soft and dear again. “I wouldn’t ask you to.” His mouth quirks up in a corner, leaves him rakish and boyish all at once. “Rather like knowing you’re with me because you want to be, yeah?”

Which is when it occurs to her what exactly he’s doing. She can’t help a bit of a lash flutter, a flash urge to play coy, any more than she can help the way her chest swells to just this side of discomfort. “George Weasley, are you asking me to live in sin with you?”

He tries a bit of a leer back. Laughter bubbles in her throat. “Think I am, yeah. Nothing untoward, of course. I’d be a perfect gentleman about it, really. Wouldn’t dream of impinging on your virtue.”

From where they’re sitting, she could grind him off in his trousers without moving much besides her hips. She can kiss any part of him she takes a mind to, his lovely face or his broad hands, his neck or his jawline around that spot that makes him shiver. She could peel his shirt up easily, fill her hands with his chest and shoulders, let him kiss whatever part of her he likes.

She’d thought when she’d met him that her virtue had been long gone but it’s never been like this with anyone else before, a thing to laugh about in the moment, a comfortable heat even before it starts.

She wants to do all of it, but she wants to stay just as she is, comfortable in his lap and wrapped in him and honestly, truly happy.

“Impinge away,” she baits with the barest of arch looks, and he’s slipping his hands down her sides, tracing the curves of her until his hands settle on her hips to tug her in, kissing her as though it’s a thing that requires stealth or strategy.

“Was _that_ a yes?” he asks between kisses, eyeing her in a show of skepticism that makes her giddy. She’s punch-drunk on him and she loves it, can’t imagine wrecking it with anything like formalities.

“Yeah, that’s a yes,” she answers, tilting in to him because he’s pulled back a little to egg a response out of her, and just before their mouths meet for another kiss, she presses their noses together and says, “But you’re coming with me to tell my mum.”

“Only if you come with me to tell mine,” he counters, tugging her forward sharply so she’s budged up against his cock, and yeah, all right, Pansy has better things to do with herself just then than argue.

::

They’re out looking for Floo grates the next day.

::

Molly Weasley is a woman who wants grandbabies enough to tolerate her children’s mates, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Pansy can appreciate — after her years with her own mother and the complete wreck of dysfunction that comprises the collected Parkinsons — the care the woman puts into her busybodying and motherhenning. She means well, Pansy’s sure, and she’s protective of her own, and if nothing else, she’s the one who’s raised Pansy’s Earless to be the man he is.

For that alone, Pansy can find patience for her, though that patience is not unlimited.

It lasts until she realizes what Molly’s saying now is upsetting Earless, that it’s meant to guilt him into compliance. Pansy’s just not having that. At all.

She wouldn’t tolerate it from anyone else and she refuses to have it from his _mother_.

“Now George, be reasonable,” Molly says, reaching out to pat his hand. George looks more lost than he should. Pansy wants to touch him, too, but she’s not sure how he’d take it.

She’s quite sure now that if it weren’t for her, he’d be going along to get along. For all she’s heard how reckless and impossible he was as a child, he’s not like that now. He’s sweet and thoughtful and lovely, and it’s taken so long to convince him he’s enough just as he is, that he doesn’t have to be the lucky half of the Weasley twins unless he wants to be.

That there’s more to him than Forge and the things he’s lost.

George is uncomfortable here, can’t quite meet his mother’s gaze without that haunted look Pansy hates. Percy’s Oliver swears George has lost quite a bit of his shine since the war and when they’re with his family, she can believe it. “We are, Mum. There’s nothing _un_ reasonable about it, really. We’re happy together, there’s more than enough room at mine, it makes sense.”

Pansy’s never particularly enjoyed having Molly Weasley’s attention on her for long, because she’s always rather thought Molly only looks to find fault. They might have gotten on better had Molly not first heard of her from Ron, had Molly not overheard Pansy calling him _Earless_ conversationally, but she has and it’s gone downhill from there. Still, just at the moment, Pansy would give anything to have Molly’s attention fixed on her, no matter how sour.

Which is how Pansy finds herself saying, “Yeah, loads of room for the babies.”

Molly couldn’t look happier. Or, well, not with Pansy and her Earless up for discussion, at least. George, on the other hand, looks Bludgered in a bad way.

“And will there be grandchildren?” Molly asks.

“Might be,” Pansy says, because she can’t bring herself to say yes, and George says, “No,” flatly as she does.

Pansy gives him a sharp look. He shoots one back.

“Well? Which is it?” Molly looks between them.

“Pants,” George says, quiet and pleading, and it’s just habit to reach out for him, to link their fingers and squeeze gently. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?” Molly asks, and Pansy can hear the edge returning to her tone.

Pansy turns to her, chin up and smile bright. “Please you,” she says. “And for the record, neither does he. We’re not asking if we can move in together, we’re telling you we are.” Once she’s started, it’s terribly easy to keep going, to be defensive of George in the one place in the world he won’t defend himself. “I’d hope you’d be happy for us, or for George, at least, but if you think it’s going to take a bit of time to get your head around, by all means. Owl when you’re ready. We’ll have you in for dinner.” She catches the look on George’s face, his sort of humoured-horrified awe, and can’t help the wicked twist of her smile. “Might even clean for it.”

It’s all a bit freeing, really, like finally — _fuck, finally_ — telling her own mum where to stick it, and it’s left Molly speechless, which Pansy probably shouldn’t find as cheering as she does. This is still George’s mother, she still means the world to him and always will, Pansy’s going to be dealing with the fallout from this moment for the rest of her life, probably.

Still. There’s no chance Molly’s going to take this out on George, Pansy just won’t have it.

“Shall I assume then there’ll be no babies?” Molly asks tightly.

Pansy shrugs. “Might be, I suppose. Accidents happen.” She thinks, but doesn’t say, that for as often as they’re on each other, the odds are in Molly’s favour, despite the high success rates of contraception charms. “But not planned ones, no. I didn’t have the happiest of childhoods, you see, and I’m not particularly what you’d call _maternal_ , and I wish I were good enough to let him go so he can find someone who is, only. Well. I’m not, am I?” She eyes George properly then, can’t help but do, and what she sees in his face matches the way she feels, a swamp of excitement and anticipation and affection that leaves her giddy. “Selfish as fuck about your son, I am. I’d apologize for it but to be honest, I’m not sorry in the slightest.”

“Aw, Pants, you don’t have to be,” George says, all her Earless now despite where he is. “Selfish as fuck about you, too, aren’t I?” His grin is slow and wicked and unstoppable. If she hadn’t loved him beyond sense before, she’d be toppling hard into it now just for that look, for making her the centre of his world even with his mum just there. “Making a crimson woman of you just to have you around.”

“George!” his mum says, in what sounds distinctly like a pearl-clutching tone Pansy’s all too used to ignoring from her own mother.

“Scarlet, son, it’s _scarlet_ woman,” his dad corrects, and just then, Pansy could kiss the man for the mildness in his speech.

“Impinging on my virtue,” Pansy agrees.

“Happily,” George says. He’s slipped his fingers loose enough to rub a thumb over the back of her hand, long, light strokes that promise good things the minute they’re alone, so she can’t mind too much when he turns back to meet his mother’s stare. “We’re _happy_ , Mum. Just as we are. Can’t that be enough?”

“You don’t think you’d be just as happy married?” Molly frowns. It’s thoughtful this time, though, not flat-out disapproval, which is progress. “Wouldn’t it be nice to just be settled down in a home? Like your brothers…”

“We will be,” Pansy counters, wrinkling her nose at the thought that it’s a marriage certificate that makes a flat _home_. Honestly, there are times she’d like nothing more than to push Mrs. Weasley at her family and watch the trainwreck. As far as Pansy’s ever seen, all the wedding license does is keep people trapped when by rights, they should have packed off and parted ways. She can’t have George looking at her the way her father used to look at her mother, let alone how he looks at her now.

She can take nasty looks from almost anyone but not _him_ , never her Earless.

“Don’t need marriage for that,” George says, blunt and amused. “Look at Perce and Oliver. They aren’t married and I bet you’re not haranguing them for kids. It’s no different with us.”

“They aren’t married because they can’t be,” Molly says, stung. “And Percy’s said they might adopt when Oliver’s schedule dies down a bit.”

Privately, Pansy doubts they’re in any rush there. Oliver’s put a fair bit of time into making first string on his team and as far as she can tell, Percy’s worse than George with his work, though she can easily imagine either of them saying different to placate Molly.

There are times she wonders if Molly has any idea what sort of pressure she’s put on her children. Pansy’s swapped her share of looks with Oliver over the years to think he’s rather like-minded on that score, that he’s got a few things he’d like to say about how his Weasley’s been treated, too. There’s a reason he’s made her short list of safe harbours at Weasley family affairs and it’s not all his sense of humour.

“We can’t be, either,” George says, gentle again. “It’s just not for us, Mum. It’s not something we want, it’s definitely not something we need, and neither of us sees much point in doing it just to please other people if it would make us unhappy.” His face turns solemn then, kind but sure. “And Mum, it _would_ make us unhappy.”

Molly looks so lost then, Pansy almost feels bad for her.

“Mollywobbles,” Arthur says. “Look at them. Don’t they remind you of anyone?”

George squeezes Pansy’s hand again, tight enough that she feels his hope. _Come on_ , Pansy thinks, _see sense, woman_. She can’t be arsed to care for her own sake but it would mean the world to George.

“You’re right,” Molly says softly. “Of course you are.”

Oh, sod it, now Molly looks a shade off crying. Pansy wants to pinch her nose for patience because honestly, they’d been _so close_ , and now Molly’s gone misty-eyed.

“Dad?” George asks, which saves Pansy from doing it.

“Us, George. You and your Pansy look at each other like your mother and I did 30-odd years ago.” They swap a look then and for all its innate sappiness, Pansy strongly suspects it’s how Arthur thinks she looks at Earless. But when he says, “The way we still do,” Pansy suspects it’s all for Molly.

Molly holds his gaze and nods, slow but surer as she goes.

“I can’t say we’ll need the time but we’d love to come to dinner. If the offer’s still open?”

Clearly, whatever’s gone on is some sort of secret Weasley code Pansy’s nowhere near ready to translate but George looks tentatively hopeful, pleasantly surprised and not quite sure he should trust whatever he’s seeing in his parents’ faces just now, so Pansy’s just going to follow his lead.

She assumes it’s gone well when George turns Earless again, boyish and a bit mischievous and achingly sweet.

“Great,” she says, and means it. “Fabulous. We’ll get back to you with a date when we’ve settled in?”

And she can see it in Molly’s eyes, that she’d still like the grandkids, that she still doesn’t understand why they won’t get married, but she’s happy enough for George to keep her peace, at least for now.

::

He’s on her as soon as they’re through the door, holding her face and kissing her like he means to never stop.

“I love you, Pants, I really do,” he says, awed and overwhelmed, and there’s more kissing. She’s rather proud of him, too, standing up to his mother like that, ignoring what she wants in favour of what he does and doing it easily.

“Same, my Earless,” she tells him as she herds him back towards his bedroom by his shirt, torn between throwing her arms around him to hold on forever and pinning him against a wall to really show her appreciation properly. She wants the bed for this, though, she thinks. Wants him waiting under her, nothing between them but a contraception spell, his big hands on her while she sinks down on his prick.

She wants to kiss the black blotch of his ear and think a bit fondly on how exactly they’ve both landed their nicknames, wants to kiss every inch of him so she understands that wedding vows aside, she really does mean to take care of him as long as he’ll have her. Wants to watch his eyes heat and darken as his skin flushes dark enough to hide his freckles as he gets close. She wants to tease him to distraction and keep him just there until he’s laughing-gasping her name, until he’s reaching for her with that hot, focused stare she adores.

She wants to do all that and more besides, wants to take her time enjoying him because by some miracle, she _can_ , and the realization she gets to have this, her Earless, her way, overwhelms her, too.

She’s got her arms around him and her face buried in his neck before she’s even given it a thought. He only holds her for a second, then he rubs her back gently and lowers his face until they’re eye-to-eye.

If he says something sweet to her now, she’s not quite sure what she’ll do.

Instead, he says, “Bed, Pants? It’s only, I don’t fancy bruises going at it in the hall, is all, and we’re going to end up there anyway, yeah? Virtue to impinge and all.”

When she starts laughing, she can’t really stop but it’s all right because he’s there, picking her up and carrying her, humming jauntily as he goes, just being _Earless_ and all the things she wants in life, and it’s no time at all before he’s flung her back on his bed with a ridiculous flourish that sets her off again, before he’s crawled over her to drink in the sight of her.

“Buggering fuck,” she says, still can’t quite believe herself or the situation. “Do you know what we’ve done? George, do you have any idea? _I told off your mother_.”

“Well, to be fair, I’d say we both did,” he muses.

“No, I mean, I told off your mother and I’m fairly certain she doesn’t out and out despise me.” It’s surreal, Molly Weasley’s blessing for Pansy living in sin with her son, and it’s only sinking in slowly.

“They are coming to dinner, so yeah, I’d say it looks good.” George brushes hair off her forehead. “Wouldn’t matter if they weren’t, though. I’d still be here. You know that, right?”

She nods, because how could she not? “You shouldn’t have to choose between us. You should be happy, and she should be happy for you.”

He nods his acknowledgement and brushes his mouth over hers. “She is. And tomorrow, yours will be, too. Or it’s my turn to do the telling off. Deal?”

His eyebrows wiggle like he’s already got mad schemes and wicked intentions, and frankly, she can believe he has. It’s not like either of them are harbouring any sort of fondness for the Parkinson side. “Can’t wait to see it,” she says, and mock-coos, “My hero,” as she pulls him down to her again, and from there, she’s rather too busy to talk.

::

Molly’s never thrilled there aren’t any Parkinson grandbabies and Pansy’s mum is flat never pleased with her only daughter but sod them both, George says, and he’s right. They get a crup who won’t stop chewing things and barking at the neighbours, then a kneazle who’s favourite spot to curl up is on George’s head at night, and they have the sort of life Pansy remembers thinking she’d never have as a kid, the sort where even when they’re arguing, she still feels like she belongs, and even through the worst of it, they both stay.

They both _want_ to make it work.

So it does.

And if they never do get around to the wedding bit and the formalities, well, they never really need to.


End file.
